PRESS MENTIONS

Co-op Board President Jumps Line to Get Apartment — And Gets Away with It

By
Adam Leitman Bailey

By: Frank Lovece

April 25th, 2014

Mark Andermanis, board president of the subsidized East Midtown Plaza co-op in Manhattan, and his wife Sandra have three kids. Normally that means New York City can’t give them a four-bedroom co-op since those are reserved for families of six. But the Andermanis family got one anyway. Not only that but they jumped ahead of another family on the waiting list for a larger apartment. And yet a court decided unanimously that the line-jumper could keep it. What’s wrong with this picture?

The other family, also numbering five, was that of Alicia Echevarria. They were ahead of the co-op board president’s family on the list for three-bedroom apartments, for which both families qualified. No three bedrooms became available, but a four-bedroom apartment did, and without any six-member families in line for it.

Echevarria’s family was denied that apartment. The board president’s family — same size, further down the line — somehow snagged it, though.

Echevarria sued, saying that if East Midtown Plaza and the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which administers such subsidized Mitchell-Lama co-ops, were going to waive the rules, it should have been first come, first served. The DHCR said she was right, that the rules shouldn’t have been waived, and that it would look for a six-member family for the apartment.

Slipping on Appeal

At this point, Echevarria appealed. And in a unanimous decision in Echevarria v. Wambua (Mathew Wambua having been the DHCR commissioner at the time), Judge Peter Moulton wrote that because Echevarria wasn’t eligible for a four-bedroom apartment, and never submitted an application for one, that she hadn’t suffered harm and didn’t have standing to sue.

So because the co-op board president knew about the available four-bedroom and applied for it even though he was ineligible — and got it, East Midtown Plaza officials said, because no eligible family had applied for it — then he gets to keep it. An additional factor was $3,500 worth of improvements he made to the place.

The Andermanis’ attorney, Adam Leitman Bailey, told the New York Law Journal afterward that, “Someone without standing cannot bring a proceeding to undo a matter of discretion made by an administrative agency,” adding, “Our clients are happy that this nightmare is finally over and they can enjoy their apartment without being bullied.”